Some thoughts on the Walmart minimum pay increase
Walmarts plan to raise the minimum pay for some employees to $11 an hour is big news. I also think this is good news for Trump and the Republicans as well as for wage rates in the US.
Sign in
Sign in
Recover your password.
A password will be e-mailed to you.
Browsing Tag
retail
Auto sales stalling for the fourth month on the trot
From an economic perspective, the coming slowdown in production will dent GDP growth.
The latest poor numbers coming out of the auto sector
US auto sales have been down persistently on a year-over-year basis during the past several months. March was no different, according to figures released today.
You should be concerned about falling car prices and Ally’s profit warning
Yesterday, Ally Financial warned that profits would underperform expectations. Now, they dd not say that profits would fall or that they were taking credit writedowns. Neverthless, the warning is an important marker and should be of grave…
The Importance of China’s New VAT
Yesterday, China announced one of the most important tax reforms of the past twenty years. It is replacing a business tax on gross revenue for non-manufacturing companies with a VAT. Manufacturing companies have been subject to a VAT…
Why I am now officially on recession watch
The recent data coming out of the US has been almost unrelentingly negative outside of the recent jobs reports. The Atlanta Fed GDP now report was already down to 0.7% for Q4 when poor output and retail sales data came out. I expect the…
US Economy: Q1 as a mid-cycle pause
I have mentioned 1994 as a benign comparison for the US economy of 2015 as opposed to the 1937 comparison Ray Dalio made recently. Having looked at reasonable worst case scenarios with 1997 Japan as a model, I want to look at upside…
The oil glut, Black Friday retail and falling yields
With Black Friday behind us, it’s a pretty good time to do a check of market currents and what they mean. And despite my generally optimistic view of the US near-term economic landscape, a lot of what I am seeing now points to continued…
Thoughts on Japan’s new recession
Last night, Japan’s GDP figures for Q3 came in much lower than expected. GDP fell an annualized 1.6% versus expectations for an annualized increase of 2.2%. This is as large a miss as you will see, and it calls into question the economic…
Detailed analysis and thoughts on the Alibaba IPO
Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, is going public via an initial public offering underwritten by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Credit Suisse. Alibaba was founded 15 years ago in 1999 in a one-room apartment…